by C. R. Grey
Bailey nodded absently. Too many naps these days, which always ended with a disgruntled professor at the front of the room. Running from class to training, then to Scavage practice, kept him exhausted. Most nights he stayed awake completing his homework in the Towers common room long after his dormmates had gone to bed—but more and more often, he was simply letting assignments slip by, which he wasn’t proud of.
It wasn’t just his performance in class that suffered: he felt like he’d barely seen Hal except at night in the dorms, and the only reason he got to talk to Phi was because of Scavage practice. After the incident with the wings, she’d found Tori and Hal, and together they’d managed to sneak back into the dorms without anyone the wiser—except, of course, Tremelo. But the professor had an odd way of choosing his battles, and simply told Phi she was not allowed to work on the wings anymore before dropping it completely.
Tremelo, who actually seemed to be having fun training him, was optimistic and encouraging about Bailey’s progress. But after six weeks of training, encouragement wasn’t enough to quell Bailey’s fears that he might never Awaken. It was already almost winter.
They had just finished their eye-contact exercise. Bailey leaned against Tremelo’s office door and sighed deeply. Tremelo had won again, but only after an arduous two minutes without blinking.
“That was a record time for me,” Bailey said. “What do you think it means?”
Tremelo was busy returning the bolts he’d thrown at Bailey that day to their proper jars. Fennel the fox was gone, out for a hunt.
“It means you can make eye contact more impressively than you could six weeks ago,” he said dryly. “Beyond that, we have to wait and see.”
“How long, though?” Bailey asked. “When does all this stuff start to work?”
“You’re in a unique situation,” said Tremelo, sitting down in his chair. “We can’t improve your bond until you’ve Awakened to your Animas, and you won’t Awaken until the time is right.”
“I thought coming to Fairmount would make it just … happen,” Bailey said. “But it’s been months, and this training isn’t working.”
Tremelo shook his head.
“A person’s Awakening is something very powerful that can’t be controlled by circumstance or effort. We’re gathering information about your skills, not trying to trigger something that can’t be triggered. And your skills do point to a strong Animas, something with great power, but we can’t be certain what it is until you’ve discovered it for yourself. Take heart, Bailey. You’re doing well.”
Bailey nodded. Another day without an Awakening. He had over an hour before Scavage practice, and normally he would have gathered his things and gone to eat dinner. But something caught his eye.
On Tremelo’s desk was the same book he’d seen the night of the wolf attack. It lay open on the desk, and its pages were covered with scratch-like markings that seemed to be a funny sort of alphabet. Though Bailey couldn’t make any sense of the markings, he saw a lovingly drawn flower etched in black ink. They were just like the ones Thelonious Loren had used on the Velyn migration map Bailey had found in the library.
He moved toward the desk to look at the book more closely.
“What is it?” Tremelo asked.
“I’ve seen those flowers before,” Bailey said. “On Loren’s map.”
Tremelo gave Bailey a stern look.
“What did you just say?” he asked darkly.
Bailey drew away from the book.
“I found something weeks ago—I wanted to ask you about it, but you said … ”
“What map? What are you talking about?” Tremelo asked.
“I found a map, in a tiny room in the library—the name on it was Thelonious Loren. That’s your father, isn’t it?”
Tremelo ignored the question—or simply refused to answer it.
“What was this map?”
“It shows Fairmount, as well as the place where I was found. As a baby, I mean. And the map is about the Velyn, about the road they used. I think … What if I’m related to them?”
Tremelo stared off into space for a moment. “I already told you—it would serve you well to be less curious about things,” he said.
“But what I’m talking about is important!” Bailey said. “What if that’s why I have an Absence—because all of the Velyn were killed? Maybe my kin don’t even know I’m alive. And if I do awaken, will I be like them? I’ve heard so many different things, I don’t even know what that would mean … ”
“Nature’s ears,” Tremelo said. For once, the professor seemed short of words. After a moment of silence, he shook his head. “You can’t believe in those stories of mountain boogeymen. They’re lies. It’s exactly what the Jackal wanted you—wanted everyone—to think. There’s a lot you don’t know about politics, my boy, and it’s a very ugly business.”
“Then tell me who they really were.”
Tremelo paused. He placed his fingers on the leather-bound book, tracing the strange markings. “I knew them—years ago, before … My father used to take me into the mountains on his research trips whenever he felt we needed to get out of the city. I would accompany my father as he observed the Velyn and even befriended them. They were kind people, and I knew many of them for years. Then the Jackal … What he did was terrible. And after he came for my father too, I wanted to simply leave it all behind and forget them. I had thought the Velyn were all gone. But now … Like you, I’m trying to find out more—about the Velyn, about everything. I’ve been tracking their movement since they arrived at the start of the school year.”
Bailey shook his head, trying to make sense of what Tremelo had just said.
“Wait a minute. Tracking who?”
Tremelo looked at him oddly.
“The men you saw in the forest, they’re not alone out there. There’s a whole camp of them. That’s who I’ve been tracking.” Tremelo paused. Bailey still didn’t understand—the men he’d seen that night with the wolf—he’d thought they were the Dominae, but Tremelo was trying to tell him something different, something impossible.
“They are the Velyn, Bailey. They’re the only ones left.”
Twenty-four
BAILEY SAT DOWN ACROSS from Tremelo and took in a deep breath. The Velyn were not only real, but they were alive—or at least, some of them were. What did it mean if he was also a survivor of the Jackal’s war against the Velyn? Would he get a chance to meet the people in the woods, and hear their story? Would their presence in the woods help him find his Animas? The thought made his hairs stand on end. He couldn’t shake the stories he’d heard about them, even after learning that those stories were just the Jackal’s lies. Despite his fears, he felt a sudden pull toward the woods.
“Sir, Phi and I found something—a claw, but sharpened like a weapon. We thought maybe the Dominae, but could it be … ?”
“You mean this?” said Tremelo, opening a drawer in his desk. He took out the claw that Bailey had lost the night of the soiree.
“This is a very traditional weapon for them—for the Velyn. They use pieces of their kin when they die, to honor them. When I went to recover my wings, I found it and figured you had dropped it. Phi had told me her falcon brought it to you.”
Bailey took the claw from Tremelo and looked at it again with awe. The Velyn had made this, filed it to its perfect sharpness. He felt a rush of excitement, and fear. The claw had belonged to the kin of the people who could very well be his family.
Tremelo seemed to be very far away, but he was still speaking. The professor turned a page of the strange book and looked at the markings again.
“I spent so many years thinking that my father was a fool. An important fool to those who knew him, but a fool nonetheless. I’ve been proven wrong.”
“Sir?” Bailey asked.
“I found something that changed everything,” Tremelo said. He pointed to an open page. “Do you see those symbols? They’re words. Each and every one of them is a real, honest-
to-mice word! You just need a special Glass to see it.”
Bailey sat there, confused.
“I’ll show you,” Tremelo said. He took something out of his coat pocket and lay it flat on the desk. It was a loose piece of leather, embossed with a collection of lines, just like the ones in Tremelo’s book.
“I found this outside their camp. It’s the name of an animal, I think. But look.” Tremelo turned to a page in his book. He pointed at the same symbol inscribed on the page.
Bailey stared at the two symbols. They were exact. But what did they mean?
“This is the Seers’ language, which fascinated my father. The Velyn spoke our words, our language, but they would sometimes use this as code. I gave up trying to decipher it long ago, but now perhaps we can finally read it.”
“But what is it?” Bailey asked.
“It’s an entire book written in the Seers’ code. If it contains what I think it does, not only will it help us understand more about the Velyn, but it could change the entire kingdom.”
“What do you think is in here?” Bailey asked.
Tremelo sat back in his chair.
“One of my father’s particular interests was the Seers who lived west of the mountains, where the Velyn stopped on their yearly migrations. The Seers and Velyn traded both goods and protection. When I was very young, my father was obsessed with the Seers’ prophecies. He wanted to know how they made predictions, and he in turn began to make his own. I believe this is a book of his prophecies—about the Velyn, the True King, and the fate of Aldermere. This book contains all of it, everything he learned from the Seers, and more.”
Bailey felt breathless. It was possible that he’d come from the Velyn, and in front of him was a book written by a man who’d known them better than anyone in the kingdom. Could this book reveal more about who he was, and what his Animas might be? He wanted to grab it from Tremelo and pore over its contents right there. But there was one problem.
“How do we read it?” he asked.
Tremelo’s eyes widened and he clasped his hands together.
“It’s a beautiful technology! They have a glass device like a prism, cut at many different angles. A crow delivered them a message one day as Fennel was tracking them. A Velyn woman unrolled it and moved the Glass over the symbols. I stayed in my quarters but channeled Fennel’s experience. She got close enough so we both could see—when she held the Glass against the symbols, the reflections made sense out of nonsense! The lines reformed and became readable words, in the language that we all speak. If we had that Glass, Bailey … ” He shook his head and smiled.
Bailey looked at the leather-bound book, amazed that all his questions could be answered in this coded language. The key to reading it was this glass object, in the woods not far away.
“Let’s go get it,” he said. “If you’ve seen it, what are we waiting for?”
All the amusement fell from Tremelo’s face. “No,” he said. “No, we can’t do that.”
Bailey felt his own face growing hot. “Why not? You just said it could change the whole kingdom! Why wouldn’t you want to—”
“It’s dangerous! We don’t know why the Velyn are near the school, or whom they’re loyal to. It’s been many years since I interacted with them—even I thought that they were entirely dead—and I don’t know if they’ll trust us. These are different men than the ones I knew. We have to find out more before we go storming into their camp, demanding something that belongs to them. We have to wait.”
Bailey was quiet for a moment. He couldn’t wait, not anymore. If he really was of the Velyn, then the Loon’s book might contain information about their immensely strong bonds with their kin. Perhaps there was some secret among the Velyn to unlock an Awakening? Maybe it was possible that they Awaken later—and that he was normal after all?
“Fine,” Bailey said. “I’ll get it myself.”
He tucked the claw in his coat pocket and started to leave. Tremelo jumped out of his chair and grabbed Bailey’s shoulder.
“Fine? You’re determined to get yourself kicked out of this school before you awaken to your Animas,” he shouted. “And that’s ‘fine’?”
“I don’t have to listen to you!” Bailey yelled back. He felt something inside him ready to pounce, and he didn’t care if Tremelo got in the way. “You made me think you wanted to help me, but now I might actually find out something about my family and how to find my Animas, but you won’t let me. You don’t care!”
He remembered the moment he’d read the map in the basement of the library, how immediately those clues had wrapped themselves around his brain like vines. Tremelo’s book had the answers he needed, he felt sure of it.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tremelo said. “You think this book is just about you, and your Animas? There are more important things happening in this kingdom right now!”
“So then tell me!” Bailey shouted. “You don’t tell me anything about what’s going on—you just talk in riddles and rhymes. You claim to care about Aldermere, but your own friends at The White Tiger bar don’t even know which side you’re on!”
Tremelo turned away from him and looked back at the book, open on his desk.
“I’m on my own side,” he said forcefully. “But I know what’s right and what’s wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. I want you to find your Animas, Bailey, but we can’t just expose ourselves to the Velyn—it’s a very dangerous game. And we won’t simply go in and take what’s theirs … ”
“But what about the riddle you told me? Could it have something to do with them, the Velyn?” Bailey asked.
“It’s nothing,” Tremelo said, his voice low. “It doesn’t mean anything. When I was your age and frustrated I hadn’t yet Awakened, my father used to tell it to me. I never solved it—but in the end, I Awakened anyway, Bailey. I don’t know why I told it to you, but just forget it. You don’t need it to Awaken—I didn’t.”
“Forget it?” cried Bailey. “So, you just said it … as a joke? What other ‘jokes’ have you told me? That I would Awaken by Midwinter Night?”
Tremelo opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by a sharp rap at the classroom door.
“Tremelo?” called a sweet, singsong voice. It was Ms. Sucrette. She opened the door to the classroom and poked her head in.
“We’ll finish this discussion later. Get your things and go to practice,” Tremelo said softly to Bailey. The professor walked to the office door to meet Ms. Sucrette.
“I was wondering if you had time to show me those papers you’d mentioned,” Sucrette asked kindly. She caught sight of Bailey through the office door and waved. “Hello, Mr. Walker! I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all,” said Tremelo, as he turned his back to the office, leaving Bailey, if only for a moment, alone at his desk.
The leather-bound book sat on the desk and Bailey slipped it in his backpack without thinking. His heart pounded as he picked up his wool coat and left the office, passing the two teachers, deep in conversation. Tremelo met Bailey’s gaze as he walked out the classroom door, and for a moment, Bailey’s chest tightened with guilt for what he’d just done. But Tremelo waved dismissively and looked away—and it was all Bailey needed to keep going.
Outside, the clock tower chimed a quarter past four. Bailey still had plenty of time before Scavage practice to find the Velyn and the glass object Tremelo had described. If he could get his hands on it, even for just a few minutes, he could read the book and return it to Tremelo’s office—maybe before Tremelo even realized he’d taken it.
He loosened his Fairmount tie and buttoned his coat up as he rushed past classroom buildings and the edge of Mrs. Copse’s herb garden. He walked down the hill that led to an opening through the trees.
Tremelo hadn’t said where the Velyn camp was, but Bailey’s first instinct was to go to where he and Tori had stumbled upon the wolf. There he would sit and listen, just as Tremelo had taught him, and figure out where to go next.
The forest became rockier and he found himself having to climb over roots jutting out from the forest floor. He thought that he’d reached the place where he and Tori had met the wolf. He stopped and heard the rush of the river, but he still couldn’t be sure he was going the right way. A lone owl hooted somewhere close by. The noises of animals scurrying in the late afternoon were all around him.
Just as he had every day for weeks, Bailey stood very still. He chose a spot near a spindly birch tree and he closed his eyes. He had learned by now what sounds and smells to expect in the Fairmount forest: the remaining songbirds that hadn’t begun their trip south yet, the scratching of mice and moles scuttling along the forest floor. He knew that he would smell the same wet, decaying leaves as he’d smelled for the last several weeks. He tried to concentrate on what was not so usual around him.
After several minutes, he finally heard it. A larger animal—either a possum or a raccoon—stumbled through a prickly bush not too far away, in too much of a hurry to be quiet. He couldn’t be sure what had spooked the animal, but he knew that it had come from the south, closer to the cliffs. He walked deeper into the forest, into the more dangerous Dark Woods, and headed toward the river.
As Bailey stumbled over the rocky ground, for the first time he felt frightened. He’d come out here completely unprepared, and Tremelo wouldn’t be there to rescue him if anything happened. He reached the edge of the cliffs, where light filtered through the trees and he heard the sound of the river burbling below. He hadn’t seen anything else out of the ordinary, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d followed the right trail.
But then he smelled a waft of rotting meat and bones—something had been hunting, something big, and it had left its kill close by. Bailey saw a tree trunk covered in long, fresh scratch marks, clearly made by an animal much larger than a wolf. He pressed his finger into the gash and thought of the enormous claw Carin had found and the wounds on the bear that had died so close to the school. He felt a tingling of recognition: the same animal must have been here.